Release Blitz with Review: Bayou Midnight by Emilie Richards

Bayou Midnight by Emilie Richards

Emilie Richards (July 15, 2018)

Romantic Suspense/Mystery & Suspense

New Orleans nights are as intriguing as the lives of three friends raised together on the city’s streets. Lifelong solidarity has seen each man through difficult times, but challenges still lurk in the Big Easy, where love is always complicated–but worth any struggle.

Homicide detective Sam Long is determined to solve his latest case, but he can’t move forward without help. His best witness to arson and murder is a little girl, and whatever she saw on the night of the fire is safely locked away in her mind.

The last thing Sam wants is to consult with anyone, especially Dr. Antoinette Deveraux, a beautiful psychologist trained in hypnosis. He’s certain there’s no place for someone like compassionate Antoinette in a murder investigation. But when she unlocks the child’s memories, Antoinette unlocks something primal and compelling in Sam’s own heart.

Antoinette is stunned by her attraction to Sam, who is determined not to let a woman into his life. After escaping a toxic marriage, she’s concerned that she’s choosing the wrong man once more. But the more she’s with Sam, the more she understands he’s not the man he pretends to be. When he invites her to meet his Cajun family down on Bayou Midnight in South Louisiana, Antoinette realizes it’s too late to be cautious. But can their relationship thrive and grow when her skills as a psychologist are in direct conflict with his skills as a police detective?

Change always comes at a cost, but as the murder investigation unfolds and danger deepens, who will pay the price? Sam, himself, or the woman he’s fallen in love with?

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REVIEW

A romantic suspense focusing on a New Orleans Detective Sergeant and a psychologist. Characters are well developed and the setting well defined. The build to their romance is a back and forth leading up to their HEA.

Originally published by Silhouette Books in 1987. Revised and updated 2018.

Review copy provided by author.

Reviewed by Comfy Chair Books/Lisa Reigel July 15, 2018

51IkBdbiRyL._SX297_BO1,204,203,200_ — Here is the original book cover from 1987

Author’s Note

Once upon a time, in a publishing galaxy far, far away, I wrote two romantic suspense novels set in New Orleans. I was living in the city at the time and loved writing and researching both books. They were my first forays into suspense, and very different plots for me. Sadly, like all series romance novels, both were at bookstores for only four weeks, then they disappeared.

Fast forward to publishing today. A few years ago Lady of the Night and Bayou Midnight, the sequel, traveled across galaxies to my loving care once again. I was so glad to become reacquainted with my characters and stories.

Now what to do?

Time passes and styles change. My writing had changed, too, and I had moved away from romance to women’s fiction. Both books needed to be updated and revised, but I knew right away they were worth it. More important, in order to finish the series, they needed the companionship of a third book, Night Magic, which I had planned to write, but never did. Unfortunately, Skeeter, the third of three childhood friends who grew up on the streets of New Orleans, was just a bit too much the bad boy for my publisher at the time. Although I didn’t agree, I had to move on, and Skeeter’s book languished.

Now I was faced with a decision. Was publishing these stories as a trilogy so important to me that I was willing to drop everything else, write the third book and dip back into romantic suspense? Darned right. I still had everything I needed in my files, as well as the conviction that this story wanted to be told. Clearly it was time to get moving.

So welcome to this galaxy and to New Orleans Nights, complete at last. Welcome to the seamier side of The City That Care Forgot, to the bayous of Southern Louisiana and to the underworld of New Orleans voodoo. Most of all to the stories of three men whose friendship never wavered.

While the first two books were updated and revised, and the third book written in the same time frame, the books are still set before Hurricane Katrina, which changed the city so drastically in August 2005. This is the New Orleans I remember and love so well.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing it, then and now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emilie Richards is the USA Today bestselling author of seventy plus novels in several different genres including romance, mystery and women’s fiction. Published in more than twenty-one countries and sixteen languages, her most recent novel is The Swallow’s Nest, a June 2017 trade paperback and hardcover release from Mira Books. She’s won the RITA from Romance Writers of America and multiple awards from RT Book Reviews, including one for career achievement. Ten of her books have been made into television movies in Germany.

Emilie finds relationships of all kinds intriguing and perplexing, and exploring that great diversity of possibilities is her passion. Having lived in nine states and briefly in Australia, she’s also determined to discover how the places we live help make us the people we are.

Right now Emilie divides her time between Sarasota, Florida and Chautauqua, New York, when she and her husband aren’t visiting their four children and grandchildren.